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FreeCAD

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Re: FreeCAD

#61

Post by sho_hn »

fifticon wrote: post #22
beachy wrote: post #6

I feel CAD is one area where open source does not shine. The problem space is too complex, and the UIs demand continuous, thoughtful development driven from customer demands rather than developers scratching their own itches. Not least there are free (as in beer) solutions available, like fusion 360, that are enormously capable. Theres certainly a place for open source, and openscad would be a great tool to reach for…

fusion 360 is exactly "free" for that reason, to make people reason like you do. They do not want a blender moment.

Note as a Linux user, the only version of Fusion you can really use is the (bad) browser one, which requires a $900/year subscription. I like Fusion, but this is a powerful motivator to make due with FreeCAD or Dune3D.

Re: FreeCAD

#62

Post by sho_hn »

andrewshadura wrote: post #42
erremerre wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood this UI problem. Because... You can copy the UI of the leader and problem solved. There you have GIMP with an absolute nightmare UI to use, but people keep saying, just get used to it. On the other hand, a single developer, in javascript, made a copy of photoshop, and most people I know prefer to use that over GIMP... Just copy the UI that works, if you can't research your own UI.

Why do you think GIMP is a nightmare? I don’t find it problematic at all. The only issue I’m hitting once in a while is that I click on a button on the toolbar, and I guess I hit its edge, as I doesn’t switch modes. Other than that, I don’t have any complaints at all. What are yours?

It's mostly a received holdover opinion from the days when Gimp still defaulted to being strongly multi-windowed. The people who keep repeating it probably haven't used Gimp for a while. The usability may still not match Photoshop, but at this point the Gimp UI is largely conventional for this genre of software.

Popular opinions take ages to shift sadly.

Re: FreeCAD

#63

Post by cucumber3732842 »

kuratkull wrote: post #4

I'm a occasional hobbyist maker and i've used Autodesk Fusion, Solid Edge, OpenSCAD and other niche parametric programs, but always felt FreeCAD was too complex. But I really wanted it to work for me because it's FOSS and 100% offline. So with the new FreeCAD 1.1 RC I found an hour long tutorial and dove in. (1.1 is supposedly much easier to work with) After doing the tut I can say that 1.1 is very nice, i can uninst…

This. 1.0 and 1.1 are monumental improvements over the decades of releases that came before.

I struggled through the earlier releases and now I use OnShape because I can seamlessly switch between work and personal computers. If I ever can drop that requirement I'd love to go back to FreeCAD now that it's "good".

Re: FreeCAD

#64

Post by WillAdams »

I've crashed and burned in FreeCAD each time I've tried it (to be fair, that's happened in every other traditional 3D CAD program I've tried except Dune 3D) --- hoping that someone will update:

https://magazine.raspberrypi.com/books/freecad

for the new UI --- any word on that? (Just an annotated copy would be great)

Apparently, one of the devs from Ondsel has done a soft-fork and is stumping for funding:

https://www.astocad.com/

(but he wasn't interested in the feature I want, see below)

That said, I managed to make it through the tutorial for Dune 3D twice now (after a fashion), and I think that the tutorial needs to do a better job of explaining concepts from first principles: https://github.com/dune3d/dune3d/discussions/118 and https://github.com/dune3d/dune3d/discussions/252 c.f., my own attempt to explain the commercial CAD/CAM software which a company I work for sells/supports: https://willadams.gitbook.io/design-into-3d/2d-drawing --- is there a really good book which explains fundamental 3D CAD concepts and terminology?

I'm way more successful w/ OpenSCAD (usually by way of BlockSCAD: https://www.blockscad3d.com/editor/ or https://github.com/derkork/openscad-graph-editor) and the available printed books help a lot, though I've been using the new Python integrated version:

https://pythonscad.org/

https://github.com/WillAdams/gcodepreview

The thing which would really help me in FreeCAD would be having a graphical programming workbench as a first-class citizen, something like Grasshopper for Rhino3D, or the node editor in Moment of Inspiration 3D, or Dynamo as used for AutoDesk software --- any word on that?

Re: FreeCAD

#65

Post by sho_hn »

fainpul wrote: post #49
dracotomes wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I switched from Fusion to FreeCAD when I bid Windows goodbye (this video inspired me https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEfNRST_3x8 ). Fusion does a LOT of stuff for you that FreeCAD doesn't - i.e. extrude a pad from two intersecting shapes in a sketch. While this is annoying at first I feel it forces me to design smarter. I've had a few crashes and the constraint solver sometimes seems to behave weird and takes a ctrl+…

> extrude a pad from two intersecting shapes in a sketch You can do that in FreeCAD 1.1. Select the sketch, enable "Make Internals" in the data tab. You can also enable it permanently in settings.

This shows a general problem that FreeCAD still has: Inside an initially off-putting and frustrating UI experience is a really good application trying to get out, but at the moment a new user still has to dig it out themselves.

For example, problems like this one. Or the confusing 3D navigation (switch to Gesture or TinkerCAD mode in the Settings), or the non-interactive view cube. And many other gotchas and paper cuts that can almost all be changed with a few clicks to make it more intuitive, or just more similar to popular competition (e.g. the OpenTheme add-on gets you that Fusion look you see in many FreeCAD tutorial videos).

It's a classic pattern with long-running FOSS projects. The authors get somewhat blinded to the pain because they're used to it, plus change is difficult for the established userbase. There's also a feeling that emulating competitors is surrendering one's own identity, and the idea that some of the rough edges are justified by "the powerfulness". Thus radically changing defaults, streamlining, simplifying and even just matching user expectations is often perceived as "taking the power away" and really difficult to have the daring-do to just do. Even though on the other side of the transition a much larger and happier userbase awaits.

A lot of FOSS projects eventually do mature to the point where they can pull this off, and I think there's real signs that FreeCAD is starting to get there. The upcoming 1.1 release has a ton of modern UI catch-up, such as on-canvas gizmos, and a few good defaults changes.

There's a lot more work to do, but like others I have the feeling that FreeCAD may well be approaching its Blender/KiCAD moment. I suspect becoming a contributor right now could be good fun.

I speak from experience! We've to some extent been on a similar journey with the Plasma desktop.

Re: FreeCAD

#66

Post by ramshanker »

pkphilip wrote: post #52
ramshanker wrote: post #27

I will try the newer version again. Last I tried 2 years or so back, it was crashing for me. Personal Context: I am a civil enginer, and our requirement from CAD softwares are a lot simpler than Mechanical Engineering. Here on HN, whenever I see people discussing CAD, its the mechanical version of parts and 3d printing. Shameless Plug: I have decided to try building my own! Over a long enough timeline, it is doable,…

Is there a reason you don't just use FreeCAD, SolveSpace, Dune3D etc instead of attempting to develop all of this from scratch given that all of this software is open source in any case?

As I said, all these are optimized for Mechanical engineering, to the best of my knowledge. In civil, there are lots of standardization in 3D part and a lot more focus on 2D side. Major part of building design is using standard steel section. Mechanical side, apart from nut bolts, everything seems to be custom. Software interfaces prioritize these use cases.

Think of I beams, all major countries have national standards of shapes and sizes. There are many "devil in detail" nuances.

So, giving it a go myself. If not for others, at least for my own itch. This is one aspect of open source.

Re: FreeCAD

#67

Post by bsza »

willis936 wrote: post #47
bsza wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another advantage of OpenSCAD (if you can call it that) is that LLMs seem to be able to work with it pretty well. A few days ago I asked chatgpt to make me a box for storing batteries, and it came out perfect on first try without any modification. It also made an okay-ish looking 3D pelican after some back-and-forth.

The problem with openSCAD is that you cannot modify it easily. I had made a complex geometry several years ago in openSCAD and I have been waiting for a model that can actually convert it into a python script that generates freecad parametric sketches that recreate it in an editable way. All frontier models fail at this, some more spectacularly than others (gemini never spent 40 minutes / $4 trying and failing, but o…

Your ball looks well parametrized to me, what kind of editing are you missing from it? Unless you want to change the shape of the locking mechanism altogether, which I think would be a chore in any format.

Re: FreeCAD

#68

Post by LtWorf »

blablabla123 wrote: post #20
beachy wrote: post #6

I feel CAD is one area where open source does not shine. The problem space is too complex, and the UIs demand continuous, thoughtful development driven from customer demands rather than developers scratching their own itches. Not least there are free (as in beer) solutions available, like fusion 360, that are enormously capable. Theres certainly a place for open source, and openscad would be a great tool to reach for…

I don’t know, I tried FreeCAD a few months ago and it was buggy as hell. I did some really basic extrusions and distance constraints. But ended up with non-perpendicular entities despite not constructing it like this.

I assure you that my 3d prints look like what I designed them.

Re: FreeCAD

#69

Post by wolvesechoes »

beachy wrote: post #6

I feel CAD is one area where open source does not shine. The problem space is too complex, and the UIs demand continuous, thoughtful development driven from customer demands rather than developers scratching their own itches. Not least there are free (as in beer) solutions available, like fusion 360, that are enormously capable. Theres certainly a place for open source, and openscad would be a great tool to reach for…

> I feel CAD is one area where open source does not shine.

Many such cases, not only in CAD area. Good non-dev FOSS software is exception, not a rule, and these exceptions pretty often have some corporate backing and are not purely community-driven. And even for dev tools there are proprietary offerings that are light-years ahead of anything FOSS, though people here are never going to admit it, as TTY clone running vi clone is supposedly all you need.

I don't state this with satisfaction, quite the opposite, but it is long since I became disillusioned.

Re: FreeCAD

#70

Post by giantg2 »

I like freecad. I'm just not very good at using it. I rarely do sketches and part design. I end up doing stuff the kiddie way with just joining and cutting out basic shapes from the parts bench.
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